800,000 usernames leaked from Epic Games

News recently broke that more than 800,000 usernames and email addresses were taken from Unreal Engine and its maker, Epic Games. Deral Heiland, Research Lead at Rapid7, has commented.

This breach is another reminder that SQL injection — which has been around since 1998 — doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon. Current reporting of this event indicates that vBulletin forum software was still in use with a known SQLi vulnerability. While it is absolutely critical that we ensure all of our installed software is patched with the latest, secure version, it’s not entirely uncommon that IT administrators and security professionals don’t have a running tally of every software version deployed in their environment. This, of course, makes it highly challenging to patch and update every bit of old software, and serves as a strong example for why organizations need to develop processes to track down and manage deployed software versioning to insure they are patched up to date.

Although Epic claims that most of the password hashes are not easily cracked, it’s important for users to remember that with motivation and time nothing is impossible. In addition to passwords, potentially, attackers could have email addresses and private messages at their fingertips. General best practices apply here: Change your passwords regularly, don’t use the same password for multiple accounts, use complex passwords, remember that anything you say in a forum – private or not – could potentially be exposed.